• 
• 
• 
• 

Abode in a Mutant World

Kerala based P.G.Dinesh draws his visual inspiration from the Sivakasi calendar images, which are emblematic of kitsch art in India. Mutating figures from the calendars with the real and mythical characters, Dinesh opens up a world of fantasy, which facilitates a field of social critique, says JohnyML.

The works of P.G.Dinesh reveals a world of mutant and hybrid characters and imageries. A passion for an altered version of surrealism drives the artist towards formulating certain quirky narratives in his paintings. Surrealism, as historically understood, manifests through the encapsulation of a subconscious world in consciously crafted imageries. Though there is a fair amount of automatism in surrealist works, most often, the artist’s conscious efforts to unveil the unconscious and the subconscious realms of the mind make it visually effective. The deliberate mutations displace and destabilize the perceived and perceivable realities and pave way for novel understanding of the mind as well as the mutant imageries within the given socio-cultural situations.

Historically surrealism had a high serious approach towards art. However, those artists who reinvented this mode of creative expression in the post modern times employ it for generating socio-political satires and also use it for critiquing certain situations that need immediate alterations. Dinesh’s approach to surrealism is rather satirical in this sense, for most often his indulgence with the surrealist mode results in a series of paintings that lampoons and satirizes his immediate surroundings. He converts the familiar into something quirky and eerie, thereby extracting a considerable amount of curiosity and awe from the viewers.

For Dinesh, the familiar and the immediate are those images that function as cultural signs/codes through which the life is understood and validated by the human beings. These signs are already loaded and appear as bodies inscribed with meanings. They, even while being the most mundane in our lives, become markers and pointers that lead and guide us amidst a host of overlapping visual images. The emblematic representation of general life and the encoded values of it in the popular calendars are Dinesh’s point of departure for the creation of his neo-surrealist world. Calendars produced by various presses in Sivakasi are a visual pool for Dinesh to pick, choose and mutate for the desired effects.

The calendar art of Sivakasi, Tamil Nadu plays an important role in the formation of the collective Indian visual cultural memory. It remains intensely secular and modestly religious by defining politico-moral values for the general population of India. With a militant affinity towards the ethical and moral precepts of the State, the calendar art reiterates the popularly held notions of citizenship and its conformity. This conceptual affinity however, does not make it completely subservient to the state ideology as it intrinsically subverts the ‘ideal form’ of the citizen’s body and all what is related to it through a conscious choice of being a derivative of the ‘form’ approved and acknowledged by the state. The subtle subversion of the ideal body and its transference to the realm of ‘imperfection’ provides the citizen as a viewer to debate his own relational and experiential affinities with the representational notions of the ‘ideal’ and the ‘subverted’ body.

This field of subversion, which I would call as the filed of cathartic representation and cathartic viewing, opens itself up to contain the pleasures and fears of the citizen vis-à-vis the corporeal body. The familiar imageries, right from domestic sphere to the public sphere of myths, politics and history to the surrounding flora and fauna at once engage the citizen with his milieu in a subconscious way. While the representation of a contended family assures his own belief systems pertaining to the strength of a modern family unit, which runs as per the regulations of the state, it also informs him of his material and spiritual lacks through the representation of desirable objects and the abstracted happiness embodied in the smiles on the faces of the family stereotype. This realization of lack, in a Freudian sense is reproduced in him as a fear for the ‘other’, whether it be a god, woman, politician, historical characters, nationalist emblems or other cultural codes. Then the daily confrontation with the calendar art becomes a cathartic activity for him as the viewing becomes a perverted celebration of his lacks thereby purging his own self of the fears engendered by them.

Keeping this generation of lack and the resultant fear through the imperfect bodies represented in the calendar art in mind Dinesh attempts to create a set of imperfect bodies in a ‘perfect’ way. He mutates what is ideal in the human/divine body as seen in the calendar art with the ‘real’ perfect bodies seen in the glossy images of film stars and celebrities. This hybrid version of the body, in a way dispels the fear and the lack and opens up an arena where the new body is produced and seen as a field of further possibilities. The imperfection of the calendar images then becomes a field for further visual engagements and Dinesh takes it as an opportunity in his works.

The possibility of deconstructing and restructuring the imperfect body with all kinds of idealism inscribed on it does not pave way for a high serious art. This art, thus produced is capable of laughing at the social hypocrisies. Each image, with its idealistic and perfectionist possibilities (with their new avatars as hybrid and mutant beings) spurs up a new narrative in which the commonly held ‘ideal’ views are inverted and reread. The referent image infuses its own context (like nationalism, good life, ideal life, good/bad habits, necessity of education, woman’s ideal role in the society etc) into the new image so that this new mutant image cannot help but referring back to the primary image in order to produce a satirical and critical discourse. Dinesh’s works with prolific representations of mutant gods, human beings, animals and so on heavily de-contextualize and re-contextualize the original intentions.